ISLAMABAD, June 23: The government has severed the monetary supply line for terrorist networks in the country from other states, Interior Minister Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat told Dawn on Wednesday.

The minister said intelligence agencies had detected sources of money being given to terrorist groups through different channels. "We have asked the countries involved in providing monetary assistance to terrorist groups in Pakistan to stop supporting such outfits," he said.

"Some of these countries are our coalition partners in the war against terrorism," he revealed. He alleged that the area of South Waziristan was the hub of terrorists and all major terrorist acts that took place in the country had links with Wana.

About the ongoing operation in Wana, he said the government was aware of presence of suspected elements there but earlier the security threat by those elements was not of the magnitude that was being felt at present.

"The acts of terrorism that occurred in Quetta, Karachi and other parts of the country over the last year-and -a-half had links with the elements hiding in Wana," he said.

"With this realization we decided to clean up the area of South Waziristan of terrorists and foreign militants to ensure that these elements could not use our soil to fulfil their designs, which are obviously contrary to the interests of the country," he maintained.

He said earlier the government wanted to tackle the Wana issue peacefully and it announced amnesty for the foreign militants if they registered with the law-enforcement agencies. "But very few foreigners got themselves registered and we had to take corrective measures when innocent officials of the Frontier Corps and the army were killed in cold blood by these foreign militants," he said.